In the Disney movie Bambi, Thumper, Bambi's fluffy little rabbit sidekick/ moral compass of the forest, says "if you can't say somethin' nice, don't say anything at all." When I was little, Linda (my mother) seemed to have thought that these were advisable words for my young ears to hear, so she repeated it to me quite a lot. I feel this was unwarranted, but maybe, possibly I've been known to have some unsensative comments on occasion, maybe. [Hopefully my wishywashy-ness at this assertion is apparent here.]
Over the past three months, I haven't had much nice to say. And this time, I decided to take the advice and just not say anything at all. I started plenty of blog posts, but they took me to very dark places and I decided that they were just too unpleasant to make others read and frankly, I don't want you all to worry about me.
One aspect of keeping a blog is that you control the narrative. Instead of life being a complex mixture of highs, lows and everything in between, you're looking at the experience episodiacally. I pull from the collection of my experiences a tale or two to tell and usually it's an example of a really great adventure that's funny, cultured, or a learning experience. This is only a sliver of whole thing - there's relationships being established, expectations being met or not met, disappointment and boundaries being challenged.
Actually, the bulk of the days and weeks are made up of really mundane moments, a lot of isolation and loneliness. The truth of living abroad and trying to find a place in a culture that is not your own is that you're on the outside, looking in, trying to figure out all the basic things that everyone else has known since childhood.
For instance, facial expressions: Americans react and show expression as they talk and oftentimes they smile and offer comforting expressions of happiness or sympathy. Israelis react after they finish speaking or listening and in the meantime, they show very little expression.
They have what I affectionately termed the Israeli face, or the most intense and unreable poker face you've ever been forced to stare into. I'm never sure if I'm having a conversation or an interrogation, OR no one can actually understand what I'm saying and they're just intently watching my mouth move around. Jury is out.
But I digress...you may recall that last I wrote I was working on some issues with my teaching situation. I eventually was able to fanangle an arrangement where I now spend two days of the week teaching with Joe, another American fellow at a religious school in town. My experience there has really put into contrast just how negative things had gotten for me at the first school. My days there were insanely unstructured and inconsistent. The teacher who was assigned to be my host and mentor, spent her days loathing her job and just waiting until the bell would ring and she could leave and go home. She couldn't even really handle my presence, let alone actually give me lesson plans, or instructions.
Most of my interactions were limited to my 9-12 year old students who premonitory cannot speak English and really don't want to learn; the adult teachers in the school had settled on a pattern of ignoring me and pretending that I didn't exist. It's partially sympathetic since they were doing it because they don't speak any English and were embarrassed about it. But when you exist in a realm of no one making eye contact with you, or acknowledging your existence, it begins to hurt, more than just on a personal level, but on a emotional one as well.
It was incredibly dehumanizing and not receiving acknowledgement from those around me was really detrimental to my mindset. Knowing that each week meant a restart on the demoralizing experience that I had only just escaped to the weekend respite, really wore me down and took me to a very dark place.
At one point, I attended a MASA Leadership Conference for a week, not because I felt especailly leader-y or have grandiose aspirations, but because I just wanted to be anywhere but that school for a week. When the conference came to an end, I think I had a panic attack about going back. I had fantasies about Israel declaring a state of emergency just so that I wouldn't have to go to school. Even worse, the malaise began to have a really negative effect on my relationships.
So, two things shifted to begin to alieviate the situation on both on a practical level and metaphysical one. On a practical level, as I mentioned earlier, I'm now teaching in a different school; I get to work with another American from the program and the host teacher at the school is incredibly competent and good at what she does. Getting to work with Joe, the other teaching fellow from Chicago is an absolute pleasure. It's so comforting to be able to communicate with someone thorought the day and work together. Joe and I have a good report, we joke, make observations and the day flies by!
I still have to go back to teach at my first school on Monday and Thursday; it's still unpleasant and disorganized. I'm not actually sure who is in charge of me there, or what is getting accomplished. I like the kids there and I feel pretty bad that they're losing a year's worth of English instruction on account of a shitty teacher who doesn't care. There's not too much that I can do to balance that out since I work with groups of two students at a time. Mostly, all I can do is try to make the time I spend with these kids enjoyable, so that they let their guard down a little and can be themselves. Sometimes that means being less than productive, but instead letting them try to teach me how to head a soccerball, or how to play the card game Bullshit. It's unconventional and probably a questionable strategy, but there's little to no instruction coming my way, so at least this way, we all have a good time. I like to think that I'm giving them the opportunity to be themselves for a brief, 35 minutes of their day, even though we don't speak the same language.
The metaphysical change that occurred was in my thinking. As I described I had gone to a low place in my head and was beginning to let that seep into everything. Over the weeks I had a lot of conversations with people both back in the states and with me here in Israel. Every time, they centered around how terrible I was feeling. I've always been a bit of a cynical and skeptical person, who can overthink things, but this was getting to a new point of being really annoyingly, obsessively, constantly depressed. And I didn't like it. I didn't like me. I could feel myself lashing out, being negative and so angry, but didn't know how to stop.
I made a lot of other people responsibile for listening and validating me and what I was feeling. I needed that in order to feel anything at all and I was sort of just waiting for something to happen that would make it better. I came to realize that there's no reason why I couldn't take control and handle that responsibility myself. I decided that I was going to be happy, and it was going to happen on my terms. So I've been figuring out what that means for me.
I've been realizing that the environment, health and wellbeing are really important aspects of life to me. These aren't values that are recognized or given much attention in the town I live in. So I certainly feel on the fringe of the community here; I don't exactly fit in, but I don't think I completely want that.
It was actually incredibly liberating to realize this; my volunteering abroad experience wasn't going to be like last year's fellows or even those around me. I could stop measuring myself to them and find my own way. I had felt very immobilized, helpless and dependent, but now I feel more in control of where things are heading and what I want it to be. So, we'll see how it goes!
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